The
original copy of Sidney Glanville's The Haunting of Borley Rectory
Report (Reproduced from The Enigma of Borley Rectory by Ivan
Banks [Foulsham, 1996])

One of
the most important pieces of original documentation associated with the
Borley Rectory case is the so-called 'Locked Book' report complied by
Sidney Glanville. Glanville had been the first person to respond to
Harry Price's advertisement in The Times newspaper and had
approached the task with enthusiasm and great seriousness. Once
Harry Price's tenancy drew to a close in May 1938, Glanville collated the
mass of correspondence, drawings, notes and tracings which he had prepared
during the course of the year long observation period and compiled a
dossier entitled The Haunting of Borley Rectory - Private &
Confidential Report which he presented to Price. Price had this
document bound in three-quarter calf and fitted with a Braman lock and
used the report, together with the reports of the other members of his
corp. of official observers and his own notes, to produce his first book
on the Borley Rectory hauntings,
The Most Haunted House
in England, which was published by Longman, Green & Co. Ltd. in 1940.

The
'Locked Book' has a suitably enigmatic history of its own which befits its
famous and controversial subject matter. Once Price had finished
using Glanville's report to write The Most Haunted House in England,
the Locked Book remained in Price's library and was subsequently presented
along with all Price's other books as part of his bequest to the
University of London Library. In 1948, following Price's death,
Sidney Glanville visited the University of London and asked the then
current librarian of the Harry Price Library, Dr. H.P. Pafford if he could
borrow the Locked Book. At the time of his death, Harry Price was at
work on a third book on the Borley case and there was a subsequent
movement to complete this volume, Sidney Glanville being one of the
co-authors along with Mrs. C.C. Baines and Peter Underwood.
Glanville presumably borrowed his original report in order to re-examine
his original notes on the case.

In 1951,
the Society for Psychical Research decided to carry out its own
investigation into the Borley Rectory hauntings and new S.P.R. member
Trevor Hall was one of the three people entrusted with the task of
re-examining the famous case. Hall naturally sought out Glanville as
Price's 'Chief Observer' in the 1937/38 investigation and the two men
became friends, Hall making several visits to Glanville's country cottage
in Fittleworth, West Sussex to discuss the hauntings. Sidney
Glanville was one of the few people associated with Harry Price's
investigation of Borley to emerge from the S.P.R.'s subsequent
'Borley Report'
unscathed, although by the time it was published in January 1956,
Glanville had been dead for over two years. In July 1953, six months
before Glanville's death, Trevor Hall visited Glanville at his West Sussex
home and after a lengthy meeting Glanville inscribed the original copy of
his Locked Book report to Hall and presented it to him. Hall
subsequently sold the Locked Book to a dealer in America for over £1000.

Glanville's presentation of the original Locked Book to Trevor Hall was
treated with some surprise and consternation by the University of London
who considered the book to be their property - the library's view is set
out in an internal memorandum dated 19th June 1959 drafted by Dr. Pafford.
Trevor Hall was in no doubt that the inclusion of the book in the bequest
to the University by Harry Price was a mistake and stated this fact in at
least two of his subsequent essays on the Borley case (1).
He considered that Glanville had only loaned the book to Price and was
correct to retrieve it in 1948, and he - Hall - was therefore within his
rights to subsequently sell it after Glanville had given it to him.
Despite their differing viewpoints, Hall allowed the Locked Book to be
microfilmed and a copy was given to the University of London Library who
never pursued their claim to the ownership of the original.

Sidney
Glanville prepared the original typewritten manuscript of the Locked Book
and it is a copy of this that is held in the Harry Price Collection at the
University of London. However, Trevor Hall prepared a further two
typescript copies of the original, one of which is in the library of Brown
University, Providence, Rhode Island. As far as I am aware the
copies of the 'Locked Book' that appears on this website are from the
microfilmed original held as part of the Harry price Collection.